The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art

In this groundbreaking and elegantly written study, Joseph Koerner establishes the character of Renaissance art in Germany. Opening up new modes of inquiry for historians of art and early modern Europe, Koerner examines how artists such as Albrecht Durer and Hans Baldung Grien reflected in their masterworks the changing status of the self in sixteenth-century Germany.

"[A] dazzling book. . . . He has turned out one of the most powerful, as well as one of the most ambitious, art-historical works of the last decade." — Anthony Grafton, New Republic

"Rich and splendid. . . . Joseph Koerner's book is a dazzling display of scholarship, enfolding Durer's artistic achievement within the broader issues of self and salvation, and like [Durer's] great Self-Portrait it holds up a mirror to the modern fable of identity." — Bruce Boucher, The Times

"May be the most ambitious of recent American reflections on the mysteries of German art. His elegantly written book deals with the fateful period in the history of German art when it reached its highest point. . . . Offers deeper and more disturbing insights into German Renaissance art than most earlier scholarship." — Willibald Sauerlander, New York Review of Books

List of Illustrations Preface Prologue 1: Prosopopoeia 2: Self and Epoch 3: Organa of History Pt. 1: The Project of Self-Portraiture: Albrecht Durer4: The Artist as Christ 5: Not Made by Human Hands 6: Figures of Omnivoyance 7: The Divine Hand 8: The Hairy, Bearded Painter 9: Representative Man 10: The Law of Authorship 11: Bas-de-Page Pt. 2: The Mortification of the Image: Hans Baldung Grien12: Durer Disfigured 13: Death and Experience 14: Death as Hermeneutic 15: The Crisis of Interpretation 16: Homo Interpres in Bivio: Cranach and Luther17: The Death of the Artist Notes Photographic Credits Index

Art Libraries Society of North America: George Wittenborn Memorial Book Award
Won